Sidewalk

Following from the discussion of the sidewalk, the vending table specifically stands as a representation of the diversity of Greenwich Village and the unique interactions that take place around the tables of the book and magazine vendors. A prime example is Hakim’s table and the variety of individuals from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds that gather there. The table is an equal playing field, permitting anyone—be they a jazz critic or high school dropout—to engage in conversation on intellectual issues. The table “also illustrates how the very presence of books on the street tends to prompt discussions about moral and intellectual issues” (25). It also serves as the men’s way to engage with broader society through forming relationships with their customers.

However, when the police seize the belongings of vendors without warning, the meaning of the table morphs, serving as a symbol of the vendors’ helplessness in the face of widespread policy changes that will affect the vendors’ livelihoods. 

As a main commercial thoroughfare in the Greenwich Village—traditionally a neighborhood of artists and liberal-minded individuals—Sixth Avenue represents the diversity of New York and serves as a place where minorities from segregated neighborhoods and upper-middle-class white residents can interact with one another in a shared public space. These changing demographics and interactions with strangers of different backgrounds also lead to new tensions, symbolizing the fraught interactions between members of different racial groups on the streets of New York.

Hakim’s Rolodex of contacts serves as a marker establishing the beginning of Hakim and Duneier’s relationship. When Duneier sees that a street person like Hakim carries a fairly sophisticated tool like a Rolodex, it causes “a shift in Mitch’s perception” of the book vendor (320-21). The Rolodex catalyzes their relationship and, thus, is responsible for the existence of Sidewalk.

When Hakim reads the first draft of “A Scene from Jane Street,” what surprises him the most is the way the white Romps are treated compared to him—particularly in the way that neighbors offer the Romps keys to use their apartments. After all, Hakim has never received an offer of “keys, which symbolize that the Romps are accepted by the residents” (328). 

Duneier finds that in talking to the men on the street, each of them has had a pivotal moment where they almost give up on caring altogether, or—to use street slang—say “Fuck it!” A magazine vendor named Warren describes this low moment: “When I got put out of my house and I went to all of my friends and nobody would do nothing for me, I said, ‘Well, fuck everybody. Fuck it’” (51).

“Fuck it!” comes to symbolize a few different ideas, though Duneier challenges all of them throughout the course of the book: 1) a drift to the streets after men no longer care to or are unable to find work in the formal economy 2) succumbing to drug or alcohol abuse and 3) an abandonment of acceptable social norms, behaviors, and family ties. However, the “Fuck it!” mentality can also motivate one to do better and improve ties with wider society. As Warren says: “That’s why you say ‘Fuck it!’…It’s never too late to turn your life around” (92). A good example is when Ron sobers up from time to time to care for his Aunt Naomi. “Fuck it!” is not a permanent condition, but a mindset that can—and often is—changed through the meaningful work that occupies the vendors on Sixth Avenue.

In Jane Jacobs’s seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the urban academic proposes a somewhat radical idea: that the safety of sidewalk life is enhanced through public characters, or “eyes on the street,” who create safer public conditions because there is a sense that “someone cares” and will step in to aid if criminal activity occurs (158). The eyes-on-the-street theory appears as a recurring motif throughout the book, representing order and safety.

Duneier challenges Jacobs’s popular theory on numerous occasions. Throughout the 1980s, American urban residents begin to perceive deviant behavior in sidewalk dwelling, leading to greater police response to control crime and maintain order. This police response flies in the face of Jacobs’s eyes-on-the-street idea, which asserts that the people on the sidewalk maintain peace through informal social norms rather than through brute force. But as Duneier argues, “informal social control was no longer enough” for urban America “because the eyes on the street were no longer conventional” (157). In other words: the people who serve as eyes on the street today are often poor members of minority groups who differ in racial and socioeconomic composition from residents around them. 

Duneier introduces social scientists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling and their influential article “Broken Windows,” which first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. Their argument in favor of formal social control radically reshapes policing of public places in the 1980s and 1990s. According to their reasoning, broken windows and other signs of minor disorder in a neighborhood indicate that “no one cares” about what goes on in that area, thus leading to rising crime (158). Politicians and law enforcement who subscribe to the theory come to see the vendors and panhandlers on Sixth Avenue as “broken windows” themselves, thus initiating a crackdown on the vendors to prevent crime.

Broken windows, then, comes to be seen a shorthand for any form of nonviolent deviance or civic disorder that does not comply with the normal modes of behavior in society, including panhandling or street vending. Heavy policing develops in accordance with this theory to establish order on the streets of New York. However, Duneier challenges the theory, asserting that “it cannot correctly be assumed that certain kinds of human beings constitute ‘broken windows,’ especially without an understanding of how these people live their lives” (315).

Edward Wallace’s attempts to protect the civil liberties of a street poet through Local Law 33 results in crafty vendors making use of the law to sell books and magazines to Greenwich Village residents. Local Law 45, which restricts where and how vendors and panhandlers can operate, results from the backlash to Local Law 33. Ultimately, both laws stand as key examples of short-sighted policies that disrupt existing local conditions. Local Law 33 seeks to protect civil liberties and in doing so enables a complex, informal economy. Local Law 45 attempts to push out the vendors through restrictive policies and create order; instead, it creates disorder between the existing vendors, as their informal social norms are upended. The laws also indicate the way politicians and authorities respond to seemingly undesirable forces with formal regulation, which may not always be a good thing for the parties concerned. As Duneier notes: “Every policy has its unintended consequences” (187).

The BID represents more than just a geographic area in which businesses and residents pay fees for additional sanitation services. It is an entity that stands for quality-of-life issues and generally considers the vendors like those Sixth Avenue to be an undesirable presence. They represent law, order and cleanliness—everything they perceive the vendors and panhandlers of Sixth Avenue are not. As BID president Honi Klein says, “I don’t think the First Amendment should protect street people. They are not homeless. These people never had homes” (252).